Club Online Zoom Event: Book Talk – ‘The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in Ten Lives’

ONLINE ZOOM EVENT

Book Talk – ‘The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in Ten Lives’

SPEAKER HANS VAN DE VEN Professor of Modern Chinese History, Cambridge University Wednesday, July 7, 2021 8:00pm HKT on Zoom

The Chinese Communist Party has just celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding. From humble beginnings in a small building in Shanghai’s French Concession, the party would go on to seize power and retain it into the present day – fundamentally shaping the course of China’s history. The new book The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in Ten Lives, co-edited by Hans Van de Ven, takes a novel approach to the challenge of telling the CCP’s lengthy and multifaceted history. Rather than focusing on policies, campaigns or overarching historical narratives, this collection of essays examines the last 100 years through the lives of 10 of the CCP’s members, one from each decade of its rule. Through the stories of intellectuals, movie stars, economic reformers and disgraced netizens, the complexity and diversity of “the most powerful political machine ever created” is revealed. Moderated by Correspondent Member Rebecca Bailey.

Hans van de Ven studied Sinology at Leiden University in the Netherlands and Chinese History at Harvard University in the United States. He has spent his academic career at Cambridge University, where he has enjoyed his teaching just as much as his research and writing. His major areas of scholarly interests are the history of Chinese globalization, the history of the Second World War, and the history of the Chinese Communist Party. His major publications are: From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party; War and Nationalism in China; Breaking from the Past: The Global Origins of Modernity in China, which won numerous awards in China; and China at War, a humanities bestseller in Taiwan. He is currently working on The Abyss: Asia and the Second World War, which by analysing events in China, India, and Indonesia seeks to provide an Asian perspective on the war.